


Against the Rest of the World

by panickedbee



Series: Those Who Vow [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, It's always the two of them, M/M, Mind Palace, Mutual Pining, Post-Episode: The Abominable Bride, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panickedbee/pseuds/panickedbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How had he not seen this coming? He is a bloody doctor, but so far he has managed to let down only the most important people in his life. Always. He was not been able to tell that Mary is apparently pregnant, and he couldn't even have imagined the intensity of Sherlock's... feelings? Of how much Sherlock cares. He cares so much that he thinks he has to repress it with drugs. Can barely function anymore. And John didn't see it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against the Rest of the World

Sherlock wakes up as everything is still swirling around him. His sight is blurry, as though he would be looking through a thick fog, all colours and light. The bright colours feel like one hot burn to his eyes and his hazy mind is suffering from a dull headache. Only when his environment starts forming, and he stops to see every object double, he knows where he is, and the realisation crushes down on him light an icy wave. He's lying on the sofa in the living room of 221B. Still, confusion clouds his mind once more over the figure standing against the light that floats through the window. His heart rate goes up in an instance, remembering just too well who has visited him the last time he thought himself to be alone within these rooms. He cannot tell if this is real or not, reality and daydreams have melted into one impenetrable ocean out of memories, punishments and wishful thinking. 

Luckily, it doesn't fit. Moriarty's raven hair, his reptilian posture that Sherlock can see in his mind's eye have faded away already and are replaced by the ever sharpening silhouette of John Watson. ( _His John._ ) The nowadays mostly grey hair shines in the light like that of an angel, his blue eyes are still easy to lose oneself in, round and dark and ... worried. He could be imagining that, but he thinks John's whole appearance might have shone brighter right when he saw Sherlock awakening. As if seeing him had pushed a button that makes John's body glow with warmth and relief. And that makes Sherlock's own world just so much warmer, safer. 

"What happened?" Sherlock asks, tongue feeling swollen in his mouth.

"You were gone again. I carried you upstairs."

Sherlock feels his face heat at the thought of that. "You didn't have to do that," he mumbles, still trying to fight against the urge to close his dry, burning eyes.

"Yes, I did. Army doctor, remember?"

They both smiled at that. It was this unspoken insider that one of them could not mention John's one occupation without giving the other one some recognition as well. Sherlock remembers how his moustached, old-fashioned Dr Watson has said it in response to his drug abuse.

"I bet you could break every bone in my body while naming them."

Oh God, has he just said that out loud? Now he could only hope that this really wasn't his reality after all. That he is dreaming again, or still caught somewhere deep inside of him. _The first man in history to be buried in his own Mind Palace._

A shiver.

But the way John looks at him... so gentle, so worried, trying to laugh the insecurity away like he was not sure if Sherlock is joking or if it is the drugs talking again.

"What?"

"N-Nothing." He avoids his gaze for mere moments, looking around the living room. It has not been that long ago that he has last seen these rooms. Still, it feels like forever ago. Everything seems so different, as if cast in a whole other kind of light. With John's chair here again like it had never left its rightful place since John first moved in. As if he had never married. As if Sherlock had never died. All the hurt they had caused each other would not exist in this utopian tunnel vision. But only for these mere moments.

After a short while he dares again to look his best friend in the eye. ( _Best friend._ ) "Are you alright?"

John, too, appears to have been deeply in thought, gone and slowly coming back at this question. "Me?" he whispers, and then huffs a laugh. "Of course, sure, I mean, you're the one who-"

"I know." _The one who overdosed._ Yes. It hurts, too.

An awkward sort of tension dominates the room and the air they breathe. There are questions that demand difficult or impossible answers. Questions behaving like an itch too deep underneath the skin to scratch it. As though the act of trying to would be a sheer waste of time in itself.

"You don't want to know how." Sherlock speaks it into the silence so softly, so quietly. "You want to know why."

This is clearly a surprise to John. Maybe a shock even. He blinks, doesn't seem to be able to stop blinking for a few seconds as his own words from over a year ago are said back to him. He can only breathe, just breathe. "Yes."

Sherlock tries to sit up straight for this. He feels loomed over. Like a helpless child. This is not what he wants to be anymore. He wants to take responsibility. For once, for goddamn once.

"What do you think?" he asks, as the world starts to swirl around him again. Perhaps sitting up has not been the best idea he has ever had. But then again, what idea of his has really been even remotely good enough in the last few months? (Or years?)

"I don't know," John says, honest as always. How can he always be like this? How would anyone come and think they deserve this man even for a split second? Mary lied to him. Mary lied to him and shot his best friend ( _best friend?_ ), so how can she have him? Sherlock lied and lied and lied. So he won't ever have him. Mary can promise him a daughter at least. A life, a future and a family. Sherlock has only brought him misery and grief.

"I don't know. It can't have to do with Moriarty. You couldn't have known about that. Or could you?"

"No..." 

It was a question. John has asked him a question. How? How can he still believe in him? How can he still doubt that Sherlock doesn't actually know everything? ( _"You've salted away every fact under the sun!"_ )

"I didn't know about that."

Or maybe John does know. Maybe he's just playing the fool for him.

 

John is not sure if this is the saddest or the most beautiful sight he has ever taken in with his own eyes. Sherlock Holmes, dead to the world. He has fallen asleep again, but John is not even sure if he has ever been fully conscious at all since... well, since he's gotten on that damn plane.

He is so scared. Sometimes Sherlock seems to hear voices and the next moment he is just gone again, just absent. His body is there in front of him, touchable, evident, but his mind is miles and miles away. John can feel the absence and coldness of him, and that sets him on constant alert.

God, he feels so much. So much that is going on inside of him. There is desperation and confusion, bottled up with anger, paired with deeply settling sorrow, topped with guilt. A hint of emptiness. He has never thought that he would find himself in a situation like this. So out of control of his own feelings that he wants to tear himself apart. Not again. But then, all expectations have lost their values after he met William Sherlock Scott Holmes all this time ago, isn't that so?

His full name. My God. It seems to go along very well with the feeling that he has never really known Sherlock. Never this side of him. Never the side that writes wedding speeches that sound like love letters. That gives him sad glances when he thinks no one is looking. That _dances_ , so precisely, so passionately, with a body being on fire, with a mind that's over the clouds. Who is William Scott? Does he know anything about him at all.

Unless... Has this also been a lie? Drunk men tell the truth, is the saying. What about high men? No, he doesn't want to think about this. But it would be stupid not to. This is it, after all. His new reality. The reality in which his murderous wife shot his best friend and Sherlock is back on the drugs.

He is not okay. How has he not seen this coming? He is a bloody doctor, but so far he has managed to let down only the most important people in his life. Always. He has not been able to tell that Mary is apparently pregnant, and he couldn't even have imagined the intensity of Sherlock's... feelings? Of how much Sherlock cares. He cares so much that he thinks he has to repress it with drugs. Can barely function anymore. And John didn't see it.

Beneath the selfish attempt of repressing all of his own feelings and commit to the new life he thought he should've wanted there was no more room to see the bigger picture. He wasn't there to stop Sherlock in his desperate search for new fulfillment. This sounds way too poetic, way too beautiful. He wasn't there to stop his best friend from destroying himself all over again. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

Everything is unfair. All hearts are broken. And now Sherlock is just lying there, in front of them. On the sofa like the sleeping beauty he simply is. John has to think it, has to force himself to repeat it in his head over and over again until he can dare. Can dare to accept this. Let a little bit of his carefully disowned feelings in again. Just laying it out there in his mind. He loves him. Oh, how he _loves_ him. How strong a feeling that is. It is scary. It is tearing him apart. But it's fine. He is fine. Somehow. Because Sherlock is alive. Unexpectedly, against all former beliefs and impossibilities, this man is still here. Like the eighth wonder of the world. Known to be indestructible. Came back to be still here. Always on the edge from life to death.

It's slowly sinking into John's mind that the reason why Sherlock thinks he has no one, needs no one, isn't because he so desperately wants to be left alone. It's because he thinks no one could bear to take him in all the time. Sherlock is so much. He blinds the eyes if you stare for too long. He steals the air out of your lungs when he takes up all the space around you. And he is so, so important, so easily breakable that taking care of him can tear you apart. John has seen Mycroft. _Really_ seen him. One of the most powerful men in the country - or the world, maybe! - who has to be cold and reptilian at all times, almost completely decomposed because he worries _so much_ about his little brother.

When he looks down at him like this - sleeping, unprotected, beautiful - he can feel his heart give a stinging jump. Then the sadness sets in. He only wants to touch him. Desperately so.

He sinks to his knees so slowly that the pressure in his legs almost hurts. (He is getting older, after all.) But the closer he gets, the lighter he can breathe. Because it's getting easier. When he is on eye level with Sherlock's sleeping face, it's easier to watch his chest rise and fall, listen to his inhales and exhales. It's so much easier to track down all the little signs of him being indeed alive. Only now John can let go of the breaths he has been holding himself. A weight is lifted off his lungs. But it's still not enough.

The fabric of Sherlock's shirt is soft, so much softer than he thought it would be. It's soft and thin, so that the warmth of his body starts to surround John until it gets almost too much. He stretches out his left arm and rubs slow circles along Sherlock's hip, his waist, before it rests underneath a muscular shoulder. One button of his shirt is pressed against the skin of John's cheek, but he ignores it. All he cares about is Sherlock's body heat, his smell and the steady beating of his heart.

His beautiful heart. It pumps blood through his veins, warm blood that no one will ever dare to spill again without paying for it with their own lives. That John swears. His heart has survived for so long. It has suffered for so long. Got threatened. But Moriarty has failed. He couldn't burn it out of him. It is still here. Sherlock is still with him. He was never actually six feet under, and the worms did never get to feed on the endless milky skin in front of him.

John looks up and sees long eyelashes and pink lips separated through a tiny gap that makes them look like a heart from this angle. He wants to kiss them. Perhaps he has never really wanted anything else. All his life, even before they met. He just never knew before seeing those lips for the first time.

Suddenly, there is a rumble that makes Sherlock's ribcage vibrate, and it sends a shiver down John's spine. First, there is only an unintelligible murmur coming out of his mouth.

After a while it starts sounding like,

"Oh Watson ... the two ... of us...."

Is he calling him Watson again? He thinks he has heard him do that on the plane before. Sometimes he wishes that he would be the one of them who can read minds. Maybe then he would have more of a clue what he is dreaming of. But maybe, just maybe, in his dream he loves him too.

He lets out of deep sigh. Takes another deep breath. Inhales his scent that smells just so much like ... home.

"Yes, Holmes," he mumbles into linen fabric. "Always the two of us."

 

Watson is holding him close, pressing him against the drawn curtains of their living room at Baker Street. Holmes is holding onto him like his life depends on it. And in a way, it does. It always does. He doesn't even notice that the room is full of elephants and the things they never say. He is too distracted by Watson's moustache tickling the skin behind his ear and his lips whispering gentle words that sound like promises.

"Yes, Sherlock. Always the two of us."

And between the moment where a tiny gasp leaves Holmes's mouth and the second before he can press his pair of lips against those of his dear Watson, he manages to whisper one promise back to him.

"Always John. _Against the rest of the world._ "


End file.
